Seven Venues of Training – Traditional Seminary Must Change

Learning Communities
Learning Communities are mid-size co-ed groups that are non-competitive in nature. The Learning Communities foster working together in a safe and stimulating environment.
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Spiritual Transformation
Spiritual Transformation Groups are gender specific small groups that meet for three hours twice per month in various settings. These settings may include a local coffee shop, numerous outdoor situations, or the comfort of a home.
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Mentoring
This is a safe relationship that utilizes personal accountability to foster an abiding relationship with Jesus. Issues of sin will be honestly addressed and openly worked upon through avenues of prayer, Bible study, confession, repentance and interactions with the student’s spouse and other family members if necessary.
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Counseling
Since Christian ministry necessarily involves interaction with people of various emotional, mental and maturity levels equipped leaders need to be both knowledgeable of and living in healthy Biblical relationships. During the first year each student, along with their spouse (if married), will experience both Group and Individual (or Couples) counseling guided by a professional Christian counselor.
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Family Gatherings
CLI desires to foster healthy, ongoing family care by creating an interactive community among the spouses and family members of all CLI students. This venue of training is entitled “Family Gatherings” and is a vital element of holistic training.
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Apprenticeship
The Apprenticeship will provide numerous opportunities for each student to have practical experiences with various leaders.
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Cross-Cultural Training
Having an opportunity to engage Christian leaders in various scenarios in a cross-cultural setting is an invaluable experience. Therefore, during the second year of training CLI students will participate in a seven-to-ten day cross-cultural trip to an international location or site within the U.S.
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The Laborers Are Few: A Biblical Context

The need for qualified leaders within the church is clearly expressed by Jesus in Luke 10:1-3

The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them on ahead in pairs to all the towns and villages he planned to visit. 2 These were his instructions to them: “The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. Pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest, and ask him to send out more workers for his fields.

A Worker (also referred to as a Laborer) is a disciple, a follower of Christ.  As many of us know, qualified workers don’t just happen, they must receive training.  The Apostle Paul lists two important criteria of being trained as a Laborer.  The first can be found in Colossians 2:6-7

 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to live in obedience to him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him, so you will grow in faith, strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all he has done. 

Here Paul clearly indicates that becoming a Christian is important, but having your roots grow deep in Christ is necessary for maturity.  There is a direct relationship between being intimately connected to Christ, personal growth and a life overflowing in ministry.  Being established (rooted and nourished) in one’s faith is necessary for growth which naturally results in authentic ministry.

The second criterion Paul mentions is found in Ephesians 4:11-12

He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, 13 until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.  

Paul reveals that the process of discipleship that leads to being a laborer in the Kingdom of God involves equipping.  Evangelism leads to becoming a disciple of Christ, but being born again is not the end but the beginning of our journey.  To be an obedient disciple we must be continually established in our faith and growing in maturity.  This process naturally leads to Paul’s point of being equipped for service in order to minister to believers and the lost.  This process is intentional and lifelong.

Making disciples presupposes that the one doing the training is a laborer.  You cannot successfully train others in any discipline if you do not exhibit a personal command of that subject in your own life.  We know that the laborers are few and we know there is a qualitative difference between infancy in Christ (a new believer) and the maturity of a Christian able to train other laborers (2 Timothy 2:2).  This leads to a very important question.  Why are so many of our churches full of believers who are infants, yet they have been Christians for many years?  It is important to acknowledge that every believer has a personal responsibility to take steps that will encourage their maturity in Christ.  Yet in order to answer this question, we must look at those who labor in our churches, and in turn, also consider how these laborers are being trained.  Many of our pastors and church staff have received formal training from a seminary but lack substantive experience as a laborer in a local church—even though these graduates have a masters or doctorate in traditional theological studies.

The thesis of this is threefold.

First, there will always be a need for more laborers.

Second, present research (Lilly Endowment funded) and the state of the church reveal that traditional seminary training is not sufficient in developing biblically-qualified laborers to evangelize, establish and equip people to become laborers in our Lord’s Kingdom.

Third, CLI’S intention is to train laborers who possess the maturity and skills necessary to be relevant in our postmodern and future generations.